


Stars

by HopeCoppice



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley Was Not Raphael Before Falling (Good Omens), Dubious Astronomy, Fallen Angels, M/M, Vaguely ambiguous relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21758644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeCoppice/pseuds/HopeCoppice
Summary: Crowley helped to make Alpha Centauri, alright - but telling Aziraphale that is a mistake. It leads, inevitably, to a conversation Crowley doesn't want to have.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 138





	Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Another weird one, sorry. Not sure about it, but it happened, so. Hope you enjoy it!

When all the fuss had died down, when they’d been to the park and the Ritz and the bookshop, Aziraphale and Crowley settled into something of a comfortable routine. Each morning, one of them would call the other to ask where they were going to spend the day, and together they visited museums and galleries and, perhaps most surprising of all, Crowley’s flat.

Crowley wasn’t sure why he’d never invited Aziraphale there before the world started ending - well, all right, he knew, but it wasn’t as if he could tell Aziraphale that it had just felt too intimate, like a temptation for himself - but he was glad the angel seemed happy to visit. Crowley himself was still a little wary of the restored bookshop. He felt as though he could still smell the smoke.

So it became a regular thing, Aziraphale and Crowley sitting close together on a sofa Crowley had miracled up especially, watching films or talking about the past. They talked about almost everything, actually, from Crowley’s plants -

_“They’re beautiful, Crowley, really splendid-”_

_“Don’t say that, you’ll give them airs-”_

\- to Aziraphale’s customers -

_“I thought I might open the shop tomorrow.”_

_“Oh. Yeah, OK, so, er, do you want me to stop by or should I just see you the day after?”_

_“I’ll open it for a couple of hours, and then I thought we might try that new restaurant-”_

\- and important theological questions that needed settling.

_“So, angel, is it moral to listen to madrigals by a man who murdered his wife and her lover?”_

_“Oh, but they’re so beautiful, Crowley. And they are songs of worship.”_

_“Well, that’s… a grey area, then, I suppose. We can both listen to those, then.”_

_“We can listen to anything we want now, Crowley. We’re free agents.”_

_“Oh, yeah. Still doesn’t feel real.”_

There were still some things they didn’t talk about, however. Things they’d never talked about, and probably never would - except, of course, that one afternoon Aziraphale found a page from an astronomy book sticking out from under the sofa.

“Oh, Crowley, I really thought we’d found all of these. Why did you have to treat this poor book so unkindly, anyway?”

A better question, in Crowley’s opinion, was why the Antichrist hadn’t fixed it along with everything else and spared him a good half-hour’s lecture from an angel who wasn’t angry, just disappointed. He hoped he wasn’t about to be treated to a continuation of that dressing-down; as much as he loved to hear the angel’s voice, he much preferred its happier tones.

But when he turned back from aggressively misting a large fern, he found Aziraphale already slipping the page back into the book and binding it with a miracle. It seemed Crowley wasn’t in trouble this time, after all. He returned to the sofa as the angel flicked through a few pages.

“You were going to go to the stars.”

“Yeah. Well - not without you. But we were.”

“Alpha Centauri.”

“Yeah, I told you that.”

“Why?” It was a deceptively simple question, and Aziraphale’s face was open and unguarded, as if he had no qualms about discussing Crowley’s humiliating failure to flee the apocalypse.

“World was about to end,” he shrugged, “didn’t want us to be on it when it did.”

“Well- quite understandable- what I mean is, Crowley, why Alpha Centauri? There’s so much of space to choose from, and you obviously considered several options. Why that one?"

“Oh.” Crowley shrugged. "I dunno. Suppose it just felt right. Nice enough place. I helped build that one, you know." 

But the moment he said it, he knew he'd made a terrible mistake. Aziraphale _did_ know, or at least he knew _now_ , and that knowledge was written in every line of his face. Aziraphale knew how the stars had been made, and that meant Crowley had just been caught breaking their greatest - perhaps their only - taboo.

The Fall.

Because the truth was, Crowley had helped build Alpha Centauri in much the same way as an egg helped to cook an omelette. 

“Crowley- you mean to say- that’s _your-?_ ”

“No. No, I- forget I said anything-”

“It’s- well, really, Crowley, how am I supposed to forget something like that? I do know what stars _are_ , you know. I know what they _mean.”_

“Of course you do,” Crowley muttered, defensive and embarrassed about his slip-up. “Well, now you know. _Where were you in the Fall,_ and all that. I was there.”

Stars, after all, were not delicately-spun stardust hung strategically about the sky to be pretty. Stars were scars on the heavens, each one marking the place where an angel Fell. Stars were twisted, mocking reminders of what demons had once been - what Crowley had once been. And stars had, for many centuries, been Crowley’s wasted hope for better things.

“Alpha Centauri- that’s _your_ Grace?” The Grace that he’d been ripped away from, the Divine Light that had once filled him. “It’s so bright, Crowley, the two-”

“No.” He shook his head. “Don’t start getting excited. The binary stars, they’re nothing to do with me. Hastur and Ligur, if you can believe that.”

“Oh.” He _knew_ it. Aziraphale had seen those bright stars in the sky, and when he’d thought one of them was Crowley’s Grace he’d thought Crowley must be something better than he had ever been. “Well, I never knew they were so close.”

“Eternally bonded,” Crowley confirmed, trying not to look at the spot on the floor where Ligur had melted away. “I should have made sure I hit both of them.. Never thought I’d feel sorry for Hastur.”

“And you… you were with them, when you Fell?”

Crowley sighed. “Do you really want to know?”

“Well… only if you want to tell me, my dear.” And Crowley didn’t, but he did. Better to get the disappointment over with now.

_The angel who would one day be Crowley was wandering the heavens, trying to look busy and stay out of the way of his supervisor. God’s work on the new universe had been getting outsourced to angels more and more frequently, of late, and Crowley was more tired than any ethereal being had any right to be._

_He was even more tired of dealing with Heavenly politics; people always seemed to want to_ talk _to him, and it was exhausting to listen to them. Lucifer had come to him, talking about a revolution, better conditions for all of them, and he’d asked how exactly that was going to work, and before he knew it, the angels who would become Hastur and Ligur were coming to collect him for the rebellion._

_“Er. Did I actually say I was-?”_

_“Doesn’t matter. You’re either with us or against us, now.”_

_Then the war trumpets had rung out, for the first time ever, and Hastur and Ligur had taken up their positions, back to back, Heavenly swords materialising from nowhere. Before Crowley could even process what was happening, fighting had broken out around him, Hastur and Ligur moving across the sky like one angel, dragging in unsuspecting angels - their kin - and putting them mercilessly to the sword._

_“With us, or against us?” Hastur cackled as they passed, too busy enjoying the chaos to notice the archangel now approaching, eyes ablaze. The archangel Raphael raised his sword, about to strike the two rebels down-_

_-And Crowley blocked the blade with his own, hastily miracled up. He didn’t want to see any angel struck down from behind, even if they were laying waste to the rest of the Host- Oh, he shouldn’t have got involved, he should have let it happen, if it was God’s will - but then how could any of this be God’s will? The first war ever, between angels, in Heaven? Angels fighting each other, killing each other, striking one another down? How could any of this be part of Her plan?_

**_"Enough."_ ** _The voice boomed through Heaven, and everyone stopped and turned to look. In the distance, Crowley could just make out the figures of two archangels, still fighting, still raging across the skies. Lucifer, of course, and… Michael, Crowley thought. But then they froze in place, and Crowley sagged with relief. God had intervened; She would end this peacefully, and there would be no more fighting. Perhaps She would take Lucifer’s grievances into account; perhaps there could be some compromise._

_God didn’t compromise._

**_"Lucifer, you and your rebels will be stripped of my Grace. You will be stripped of your names and removed from the Host. You will be cast out, forever, for what you have done."_ **

_Michael was thrown backwards as Lucifer suddenly dropped with a scream, the remnants of his Grace lingering in the air even as he Fell. For a moment, all of Heaven could only stare in shock - and then more angels Fell. Hastur and Ligur dropped, screaming and clutching one another, their Grace shining bright even in their absence. Crowley barely had time to register it before he felt a tug at his own essence._

_With us, or against us? Hastur had asked, and Crowley hadn’t meant to make a choice. He hadn’t meant to choose to stand against God; he just didn’t want to stand against his friends, or see them cut down._

_It didn’t matter. Crowley Fell._

Aziraphale was quiet after Crowley finished telling his story, and the tension in the demon’s chest was threatening to become unbearable. He felt as though he was suffocating, even though it shouldn’t have been possible. Desperate to occupy his hands and mind, he took his astronomy book from where it rested on Aziraphale’s knees and flicked through a few pages.

“That-” _Proxima Centauri,_ a dim, dying star barely visible beyond the bright points of Hastur and Ligur’s bond. It was a sad little thing, Crowley knew, but it was- “That’s mine. My- my Grace.”

“Oh, _Crowley.”_ It was barely a whisper, Aziraphale’s fingers ghosting over the page, tracing the grainy image with something that would have almost looked like reverence, if Crowley hadn’t known how disappointed he must be.

“I know. Suppose I never had much to start with, did I? No wonder I was a rubbish angel. Worse demon. No wonder-”

“You were going to take me to it,” Aziraphale interrupted, “you were going to go back?”

“Yeah. I- if it was the end of the world- at least I’d have been all in one place. I wasn’t- it’s not like I thought I could get it back. I just…”

He couldn’t explain; he didn’t know what he’d been thinking. That being near the remnants of his Grace might bring him comfort? That Aziraphale might be able to draw some strength from it, somehow? That it made sense to face the end of his existence in the same place where it had changed completely? Maybe, deep down, he _had_ hoped he could take it back, somehow, and be what Aziraphale wanted. He didn’t know. He had just wanted to be safe, with Aziraphale, and the place - _his Grace -_ had called to him.

“You silly demon,” Aziraphale scolded him gently, and dragged him into an awkward sideways hug. Crowley didn’t know what to do; this had never happened while he was sober before. “You silly, silly demon. You don’t really think that, do you?”

“No, I told you, I wasn’t trying to get it back-”

 _“Never had much Grace to start with,_ well, honestly,” Aziraphale shook his head. “Is that what you believe?”

“Look at it, angel. It’s not exactly blinding. Hastur and Ligur had so much Grace, Hell made them Dukes. Me-”

“Lost so much Grace,” Aziraphale amended gently, “they _lost_ so much Grace.”

“Well, yeah. She ripped it out of us - or maybe She ripped us out of it-”

“But Crowley- She took back _Her_ Grace. _Her_ goodness.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, maybe She didn’t take so much from you because it wasn’t all _Hers_. You’re still a good person, Crowley, deep down.”

“Just a little bit, you said.” He didn’t understand what Aziraphale was getting at.

“Crowley, you still have _your_ Grace. Your _own_ Grace, some goodness within you that you wouldn’t let go of, even when you Fell. That star - you should be proud of it. If that’s all the Almighty could take from you - think how strong you are, how _good_.”

Crowley stared down at the picture for a moment. For millennia, he had known that Hastur and Ligur's Grace had burned so much brighter in Heaven, that they were so much more important than him in Hell. Now, what Aziraphale was saying… it threw everything he knew into doubt. It felt like hope, and despair, and danger, all at once.

"That… 's a theory, angel. Can't know."

"No. No, I can't be sure. But I _do_ know - I have known for a very long time - that there is good in you. Don't you _ever_ think you're less than them. Certainly not over a star."

" _My_ star,” Crowley pointed out, feeling for the first time in a long while as though that was something he could be proud of. “She took it from _me_.”

“Yes, my dear. And you’re still a better person than all Her archangels put together, so I think I got rather the best deal out of all that unpleasantness with our former sides.”

Aziraphale pressed a kiss into his hair, as if it was natural, as if nothing more needed to be said, and Crowley turned his face up to receive the next kiss. Perhaps, after all, there had been enough words for one day.

“I’m glad,” Aziraphale admitted, when he paused between kisses, “that your star wasn’t bound up with another, after all. Is that selfish of me?”

“Whatever Grace I have left is bound up with _yours_ , angel.”

And _then_ there were no more words.


End file.
